Supply-Side Policies in the Depression: Evidence from France

Jérémie Cohen-Setton (), Joshua Hausman and Johannes Wieland

No WP17-4, Working Paper Series from Peterson Institute for International Economics

Abstract: The effects of supply-side policies in depressed economies are controversial. This Working Paper sheds light on this debate using evidence from France in the 1930s. In 1936, France departed from the gold standard and implemented mandatory wage increases and hours restrictions. Deflation ended but output stagnated. The authors present time-series and cross-sectional evidence that these supply-side policies, in particular the 40-hour law, contributed to French stagflation. These results are inconsistent both with the standard one-sector new Keynesian model and with a medium-scale, multi-sector model calibrated to match the authors’ cross-sectional estimates. They conclude that the new Keynesian model is a poor guide to the effects of supply-side shocks in depressed economies.

Keywords: Depression; stagflation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 E32 E65 N14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Supply‐Side Policies in the Depression: Evidence from France (2017)
Working Paper: Supply-Side Policies in the Depression: Evidence from France (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp17-4

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